Contributions from STRS members (teachers), the State and school districts equaled $8,288.519 for 2016. Benefits paid to retirees equaled $13,148.558 for 2016. Contributions are not keeping up with benefits paid to retirees.

Trend Number Two (investment assumption):

STRS used to project a 7.5% rate of return on its investments; in the recent past it downgraded its rate of return to 7.25%; now it is 7.00%. Because of the recent downgrade, the State just increased its contribution rate by 0.5%; this will not make taxpayers happy. Also, new teachers, hired after January 1st, 2013, will see a 1% increase in their contribution rate probably beginning in the year 2018.

Trend Number Three (Global Equity):

The investment portfolio of STRS is diverse. STRS invests in real estate, private equity, global equity, etc. However, 54.8% of its investment portfolio is tied up in global equity. This probably explains why STRS just downgraded its rate of investment to 7.0%. Here are some issues that I have with Global Equity Stocks:

BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) were hailed as the new super economic engines. Newspaper article after article promoted the idea that these four countries would change the global economy so that it would move in an upward trend. This was true for a while. Unfortunately, Brazil’s economy has become anemic due to its vast political troubles (government scandal after scandal). China’s growth has slowed dramatically. Russia’s economy has been underperforming somewhat in part due to the economic sanctions placed on it; plus, its economy is too reliant on oil.

The European Union is still struggling. Spain, Italy, Greece and other European countries are seeing debt choking the breath right out of their economies. Germany is still performing extremely well, but France’s economy is sputtering.

Japan’s economy has not been strong since the early 1990s. Moreover, Japan is going to have some serious economic issues in the near future. Japan’s population is aging and Japan has negative population growth. There won’t be enough workers to pay for the retirees. Plus, the Japanese have the longest life span of any other group of people. Overall, Japan’s economy is headed for disaster.

Based on the economies of other countries, it is my prediction that STRS won’t even reach its 7.0% forecast. I wouldn’t be surprised if STRS reduces its rate of return from 7.0% to 6.75% within the next ten years.

Trend Number Four (U.S. Economy):

The $20 trillion debt and growing cannot be ignored. The U.S. cannot keep increasing the debt ceiling every year. Once the U.S. stops increasing the debt ceiling, then the pain of the $20 trillion debt will settle in. Taxes will increase and government services will be cut. Trump promised he would increase the GDP like we have not seen for some time, but Trump’s rosy economic picture is full of thorns. Unfortunately, he falsely raised the expectations of Americans; there is no way that he can deliver on4%, 5% or even 6% GDP growth. His whole economic plan is based on unbelievable growth in the GDP. This cannot occur because most foreign countries are not doing well if one digs below their economic facades (cannot buy enormous amounts of American goods). Also, the $20 trillion debt is pounding on our door. There are no more IOUs.

What does all of this mean? It means that STRS will have to reduce its pension obligations. Sometime in the future, retirees won’t see any more automatic 2% COLA increases. In fact, retirees might even seen their pensions reduced. Teachers, who will be retiring within the next five to twenty years, will see their promised retirement reduced. Teachers who just entered the profession, I feel sorry for them.

Teachers must plan for a reduced pension. They need to pad their own retirements!!!

Note from this blog’s host: I worked as a classroom teacher in one of California’s many public school districts from 1975 – 2005. During those 30-years, I contributed 8-percent of my gross pay into CalSTRS and the district where I worked contributed another 8.25 percent. I have been retired for 12 years. When I retired, I took a 40-percent pay cut and left with no medical coverage from that district or the state. If you want to know what that job was like, read my memoir “Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose” (link below).

The state of California made promises to its public school teachers.

What happens to retired teachers like me if the state breaks that promise?

How will those teachers pay their rent/mortgage, keep the water running, the electricity on, buy food?

Do billionaires and corporations expect retired teachers to go back to work at 75, 80, 90, or even 100, if we live that long, so those greedy autocrats with more money than God can pay little or no tax?

What happens to the hundreds of thousands of teachers still teaching if the state can’t pay for its promises to them?

I want to leave the readers of this Blog with one thought from Thomas Jefferson, who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Most if not all corporate charter schools do not have retirement plans for their teachers, those teachers have no Constitutional due process rights, those teachers are paid less and must work longer hours, and they do not pay into the retirement plans for traditional public schools.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and disabled Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

If the New York Times is such a great newspaper, why does it support Corporate Charter Schools as better than community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools in its pages?

Test scores do NOT make a good or great school.

Honest studies based on all the facts that go beyond the hype and lies pumped out repeatedly by the billionaire supported autocratic, opaque and secretive, for-profit, often fraudulent and child abusing corporate charter school industry repeatedly prove that these for-profit (not public) schools that take public money are no better, are often worse and are riddled with fraud and corruption.

While traditional public schools are ridiculed and often closed for allegedly failing to educate ALL the students according to flawed laws and legislation, the corporate charter schools are often ignored when they fail worse than any public school has ever been accused of.

Until the New York Times reports accurately and honestly without bias about what is really happening in the United States about the county’s arguably great community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools, I will not subscribe to your newspaper even to support you financially.

I earned my BA in journalism from Fresno State Universty in California in 1973, and the New York Times inadequate and often biased coverage of the greed based autocratic war against the highly successful community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools. I taught both English and journalism in California public schools for thirty years so I know what I am talking about. If you have the time; if you have an open mind, read my memoir “Crazy is Normal”. This memoir was not written with best-seller status in mind. It was written to reveal what goes on in an American classroom and it was based on a daily journal that I kept for one full school year.

I know what I am talking about when I allege that America’s traditional public schools are a great success. Test scores do not measure success. The college graduation rate does (The U.S. of ranked annually as one of the most educated countries on the planet). The high school graduation rate by age 25 does. The fact that America’s publishing industry is the largest and most profitable in the world does, because, without readers, that publishing industry would be insignificant.

And without the life-long learners, critical thinkers and problem solvers who are educated in America’s traditional, community base, democratic, transparent, non-profit (REAL) public schools, there would be no democracy. High test scores from flawed and secretive tests that profit corporations like Pearson do not educate life-long learners, critical thinkers and problem solvers that this country needs to survive as a Constitutional Republic.

Let America’s highly educated teachers that belong to labor unions teach and get corporations, state capitals, and Washington DC out of the nation’s classrooms. Those teachers’ unions are necessary to protect teachers from frauds and bullies like Donald Trump.

Leave the teaching to the teachers and remember, the teachers do not learn for the students. Children must come to school ready and willing to learn.

It’s All About the Money!

A note from Cliff Levy, Deputy Managing Editor

Greetings,

I’m writing from the newsroom of The New York Times, where I’m a deputy managing editor, helping to oversee more than 1,200 journalists across the globe. I’m reaching out because you’ve shown an interest in Times journalism, and I thought that you’d like to hear how we view our mission.

Our journalists pursue stories around the clock because we believe in the power of information, ideas and debate to shape the world and inspire change. Just a few examples from our coverage in recent days:

•

When Syria insisted that it did not carry out a horrific chemical attack on civilians, Times reporters did groundbreaking work with forensic mapping to dispute the government’s claims.

•

Our Washington investigative team produced a special report on the F.B.I. director’s role in shaping the 2016 presidential election. After the director was dismissed by President Trump, the investigative team then came up with a series of scoops that revealed what had really happened behind the scenes.

Real reporting is vital in a media landscape full of deceptive or outright false news. And we can do it because we have the support of our subscribers.

Of course, you can also look to The Times for compelling coverage on how to live a more fulfilling life. Our Cooking section offers thousands of recipes and how-to guides. Our experts offer advice on everything from how to avoid addiction to technology to how to exercise more effectively.

We also believe in elevating our readers’ voices in order to highlight a diversity of views. In a landmark partnership with Google, we’re going to open up most of our articles to comments, creating an engaging and respectful forum for you to discuss the issues of the day.

A little about me: I’ve spent 27 years at The Times, winning two Pulitzer Prizes, one for my work in Russia and one for exposing the abuse of mentally ill people.

Like so many in our newsroom, I’ve devoted my career to The Times because I believe in the role that independent and original journalism can play in society.

After reading O’Neil’s Mathbabe post, I was glad I was never suckered into a Facebook obsession. Yes, I do have two Facebook pages: one for my books that’s part of my internet-author’s platform, and a personal Facebook page, but all I did was set up automatic feeds from my 4 blogs to Facebook and occasionally I go there to reply to a comment. The reason I never fell into the Facebook swamp was because it was a confusing maze to me, and I didn’t want to go through the learning curve to discover how to use all those allegedly great bells-and-whistles that Facebook offers to help destroy your life in the real world.

But the stream of thoughts that flowed between my ears as I was reading O’Neil’s Mathbabe blog post had nothing to do with Facebook. It was all about Mark Suckerberg, Facebook’s founder, and how he was conned out of a $100 million dollars to save the children of Newark, New Jersey from those horrible failing public schools that really never were failing anyone as schools. If you want to learn more (put an emphases in LEARN — because there are far too many ignorant, easy-to-fool voting citizen in the U.S., or we wouldn’t be stuck with narcissistic, psycho, serial-lying, con-man, Donald Trump for our next president — I suggest reading What Happened with the $100 million that Newark schools got from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg? Not Much from The Hechinger Report.

You see, there’s this myth that America’s traditional public schools are failing and to save our children we have to replace those schools with an unproven, genetically-modified crop of allegedly perfect, (hell sent) corporate charter schools that just happen to make profits for a host of greedy frauds and liars similar to Donald Trump and his current pick to run the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos.

If you think America’s community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools are failing and the choice of a corporate charter school is the answer to save our children, then I will roar as only a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Vet can angrily shout, “It’s the poverty, stupid, you ignorant, biased, deplorable, easy-to-fool ass!”

The conclusion of this report from one of the top-ranked universities in the world said, “A comprehensive analyses of international tests by Stanford and the Economic Policy Institute shows that U.S. Schools aren’t being outpaced by international competition.”

After reading that report, it was obvious to me that the results of the international test that Stanford referred to was rigged to make America’s traditional public school look bad.

Stanford reported that once the flawed data was corrected, the U.S. went from 14th in reading to SIXTH and went from 25th in math to 13th.

In addition, Stanford discovered “There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students (living in poverty) in every country; surprisingly, the gap is smaller in the United States … and not much larger than the very highest scoring countries.” In fact, “Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students (living in poverty) has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students (living in poverty) in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared … had been falling rapidly.”

It’s time for most voting Americans to wake up and stop being suckered like Suckerberg was in Newark, New Jersey. It’s obvious that before the top-down reforms forced on the United States by President G. W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and continued with President Obama’s flawed and fraudulent Race To The Top bullshit and its Common Core test-and-punish crap, the United States had (and hopefully still has) one of the best public education systems in the world, and it was on track to only get better.

And who is con-man President-Elect Donald Trump putting in charge to finish the destruction of America’s top-rated public schools? The answer: labor union hating, billionaire Betsy DeVos, who never attended a public school in her life, and she sends her own children to very expensive private schools that only the wealthy can afford.

Make no mistake about this. The United States is on the verge of the total destruction of one of the best public education systems in the world, and what is waiting to replace it is the autocratic, opaque-and-secretive, often fraudulent-and-inferior, private-sector corporate charter school industry that often bullies and terrorizes children to become assembly-line drones that score high on tests or face eviction back to the cold, brutal world of underfunded and deliberately abandoned, traditional public education.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and disabled Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

The one issue that should be on every parents mind and the presidential candidates is what’s known as the alleged “school to prison” pipeline, and how to deal with this issue instead of making it worse. While Hillary Clinton has a long, committed record advocating for women and children, all we get from Donald Trump is his famous “pussy snatch”, and that he’s not attracted to women that are ugly (according to him), fat, and over 35.

Before I move on, I want to point out that I disagree with the use of the term “School to Prison” pipeline, because that pipeline starts at birth not in kindergarten.

It’s not the school to prison pipeline. Instead, it should be called the Poverty – Illiteracy to Prison Pipeline.

In addition, the zero-tolerance policy that has swept America today isn’t the cause of this pipeline, but is making the situation worse for children that live in poverty and read far below grade level.

Instead of making the poverty-illiteracy pipeline to prison worse with these zero tolerance policies, schools should be doing more to starve that pipeline by offering more than just an academic high school degree at the end of 12th grade.

But schools can’t do it alone if they aren’t supported or funded properly.

Instead of more campus police officers (CPOs), the United States must have a national early childhood literacy program starting with children as young as 2 with a mandatory focus on all children that live in poverty and/or in homes where the parents are illiterate. These literacy programs cannot stop when children reach kindergarten at age 5. They must continue all the way through 12th grade. In addition, the United States must offer children entering high school a choice between a vocational and/or an academic high school degree. Many countries already do this: Japan, South Korea, Germany, China, for instance.

In Japan, only 70 percent of high school students graduate from academic high schools as they plan to go to college. The rest, planning to start work out of high school, graduate from vocational high schools, and a few students double up and graduate from both high school tracks.

Without that choice, the United States is not meeting the needs of future generations. Instead, the United States has become a police state with the largest prison population in the world with China in a distant 2nd place in a country that has more than four times the population of the U.S.

And most if not all of the autocratic, corporate charter schools industry is worse than the democratic traditional public schools, because they cherry pick the easiest to teach students who tend to score higher on arguably useless high stakes tests and quickly get rid of students that are a challenge to teach that slipped through their cherry-picking filter. In addition, autocratic, opaque and often fraudulent and inferior corporate charter schools continue to suspend students at much higher rates creating a true school to prison pipeline that should be called the autocratic, corporate charter school pipeline to prison.

The Associated Press reported on September 6, 2016 that ITT Tech, with more than 35,000 students, will close all of its campuses after federal aid sanctions.

The AP reported, “Under President Barack Obama, the Education Department has led a crackdown on for-profit colleges that have misled students or failed to deliver the results they promise. The now-defunct Corinthian College chain agreed to sell or close more than 90 U.S. colleges in 2014 amid a fraud investigation over advertising practices. The department is also deciding whether to cut ties with the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, the group that accredited ITT and Corinthian.”

With fraud and corruption also rampant in the K-12 corporate charter school industry, will that for-profit sector be next?

Stanford’s Bill Gates funded Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) reported in 2013 in its National Charter School Study that 75 percent of these corporate charter schools were no different or significantly worse than the locally controlled, community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional, public schools. In Math, 71 percent were no different or significantly worse.

Bill Gates funded the CREDO study, but he isn’t the good guy here. It’s obvious that Gates expected different results and has ignored the results of the study. Johnathan Petro reveals, “In a stunning expose written by Adam Johnson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), it becomes undeniably clear that Bill Gates has reached the point where his billions not only fund the myriad of corporate education reform initiatives that are sweeping the country and the world, but his investment in the media taints much of the coverage of these developments.”

It’s obvious that the corporate education reform movement funded by billionaires and hedge funds failed long ago. Diane Ravitch reported in November 2015, “The big foundations support the growth of the charter industry: the Walton Family Foundation has put more than $1 billion into charters and vouchers; the Gates Foundation and the Eli Broad Foundation also put millions into charters, often partnering with the Far-right Walton Foundation.”

Ravitch continues, “There is a long list of other foundations that fund the assault on public education, including the John Arnold Foundation (ex-Enron trader), the Dell Foundation, the Helmsley Foundation, the Fisher Family Foundation (Gap and Old Navy), the Michael Bloomberg Foundation, and many more.”

The charter school movement was hijacked by billionaires and corporations. The original concept proposed in 1974 by professional educators that belonged to teachers’ unions was to allow a few schools called charters to operate as autonomous public schools with waivers from many of the legislated procedural requirements of district public schools, and to work with the most at risk children. The original concept never meant to destroy the traditional public schools but to work within the existing system.

In 1991, Minnesota was the first state to pass a charter school law. California was second in 1992.

Today fraud is rampant in what has become a secretive, publicly funded, for-profit (even when called a non-profit), corporate education sector that is at war with the traditional public schools, teachers’ unions and public school teachers.

Charter schools were never meant to be operated by secretive, publicly funded, private-sector corporations that cherry pick the easiest to teach students (stealing the best students from the traditional public schools) who score higher on faulty, secretive, high stakes standardized tests that profit other private sector corporations that produce the tests.

The children charter schools were meant to help are been locked out, and if the public schools are destroyed, the only education left for most if not all of these at-risk children will be the streets that feeds the poverty to prison pipeline.

It’s obvious that the corporate/billionaire hijacked charter school concept has had 25 years to prove itself and has failed miserably.

The corporate charter school industry continues to mislead the nation with its lies and cherry-picked information/facts and has failed to deliver on the often fraudulent and false promises made decades ago that are repeated today.

It’s time for President Obama to pull the plug on corporate education reform and defy the oligarchs: Bill Gates, the Walton family, Eli Broad, John Arnold, and all the other billionaire funded, autocratic, private sector foundations that are nothing but tax shelters that further the individual extremist goals of their billionaire founders that operate outside of the democratic process of the U.S. Republic the American Founding Fathers created with the U.S. Construction.

“What’s at stake is the future of American Public Education – one of the foundations of our democracy.”

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and disabled Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

We live in an era where traditional American, community based, democratic, transparent, nonprofit, publicly funded, public schools are starved of funds and even closed while professional, dedicated, hardworking teachers are punished or fired based on student test results; tests that profit the private sector corporations that produce them.

The result is that more of our children end up in autocratic, CEO controlled, opaque (secretive), often child abusing, fraudulent-and-inferior, no excuses, test centered, publicly funded, private sector corporate charter schools where management gets paid a lot more, and teachers are paid less but work longer hours. WNYC.org reports, “Charters spend $774 more per pupil on administration, and $1,140 less on instruction, than do traditional publics.”

The American Psychological Association reports, “The nation’s economic crisis has deeply affected the lives of millions of Americans. Skyrocketing foreclosures and job layoffs have pulled the rug out from under many families, particularly those living in low-income communities. Deepening poverty is inextricably linked with rising levels of homelessness and food insecurity/hunger for many Americans and children are particularly affected by these conditions.”

Childhood Depression

WebMD.com says, “Children who are depressed may not do well in school, may become socially isolated, and may have difficult relationships with family and friends, Fassler says. Depression in children is also associated with an increased risk for suicide. The rate of suicide among young people has nearly tripled since 1960 and is the sixth leading cause of death among children between the ages of 5 and 14, the third leading cause of death among 15- to 24-year-olds, and the second leading cause of death among college students.”

Learning Liftoff.com says, “It’s shocking to note that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average child under 12 consumes 49 pounds of sugar annually. That’s only three pounds less than the average adult despite children being much smaller. All that sugar consumption isn’t helping their overall health, but is it impacting their academic performance? You might be surprised at the answer.”

Sugar Decreases Attention Span and memory

Chronic Sugar Consumption Might Permanently Impair Memory Function

Sugar Foods Crowd Out Brain Food

Childhood PTSD

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reports, “Studies show that about 15% to 43% of girls and 14% to 43% of boys go through at least one trauma. Of those children and teens who have had a trauma, 3% to 15% of girls and 1% to 6% of boys develop PTSD. Rates of PTSD are higher for certain types of trauma survivors. … Besides PTSD, children and teens that have gone through trauma often have other types of problems. Much of what we know about the effects of trauma on children comes from the research on child sexual abuse. This research shows that sexually abused children often have problems with: fear, worry, sadness, anger, feeling alone and apart from others, feeling as if people are looking down on them, low self-worth, and not being able to trust others; behaviors such as aggression, out-of-place sexual behavior, self-harm, and abuse of drugs or alcohol.”

Substance abuse

Alcohol Rehab.com says, “Children of parents who suffer from substance abuse problems can have problems at school as a result of the upheaval, unpredictability and violence they face at home. Some children have immense strength and can cope with their problems and still manage to maintain good school grades and relationships, but more often than not this is not the case. Bullying, fighting, bad grades, problems with attention span, fear of authority and emotional problems are all signs that a child is facing significant home problems.”

Lack of sleep

The Douglas Institute in Quebec reports, “Reducing sleep may disrupt the ability of students to concentrate for long periods of time, and remember what they learn in class. According to a study, children with reduced sleep are more likely to struggle with verbal creativity, problem solving, inhibiting their behaviour, and generally score lower on IQ tests according to current leading research.”

Sleep Foundation.org recommends that school age children 6-13 sleep 9 to 11 hours and adolescents 14-17 should sleep 8 to 10 hours daily, but according to Sleep For Kids.org “It is clear from the poll results that we need to focus as much on the sleeping half of children’s lives as we do on the waking half. Children are clearly not getting enough sleep,” says Jodi A. Mindell, PhD, who served as Chair of NSF’s 2004 Poll Task Force: “And a remarkable number of children have some kind of sleep problem.”

Over on Gadfly On the Wall, I read how some of Pennsylvania’s Legislators want the people of that state to foot the bill for unimpeded corporate charter school growth with little to no accountably but with almost unlimited opportunities to cheat and steal from the public.

If this legislation passes, this will be a legislated license to make theft legal – a perfect storm for frauds, cheats and thieves. And to think, to create this perfect-profit storm, the elected corrupt are willing to throw OUR children under a tank and let the tank roll over them crushing their spirits and any chances that they will grow up loving to learn and read.

Be warned publishers and colleges, in a decade or two the sales of books will plummet into an abyss and so will enrollment in the nation’s colleges. And contrary to popular rumors that no one reads anymore, the publishing industry is not dying, yet, but under the autocratic corporate education industry’s rank and punish system, I think those sales will start falling soon as children learn to hate education and reading.

“Being yelled at by a teacher made me not want to learn.”

If you live under a rock and haven’t heard about this for profit, private-sector rank-and-punish system for OUR children and not theirs, read all about it here:

Currently “The United States has the largest publishing industry in the world – in 2012 the U.S. market was worth just under 30 billion euro and represented around 26 percent of the total global publishing market. The book publishing industry claimed the lion’s share of that amount, with revenues totaling almost 29.5 billion dollars in the same year, a number which has since decreased to only 29 billion dollars. The market currently appears to be relatively stagnant, as both revenue and unit sales have failed to show significant changes in recent years.” For more information see U.S. Publishing Industry’s Annual Survey Reveals $28 Billion in Revenue in 2014.

The odds are that another U.S. ranking will soon fall as children learn to hate learning as they are punished and mentally tortured and bullied repeatedly.

The U.S. is currently ranked the 4th most educated country in the world thanks to the traditional, community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public schools with a long history of success regardless of the lies and misconceptions supported by the likes of Arne Duncan, David Coleman, Bill Gates; the union busting, poverty wage paying Walmart Waltons, and Eli Broad, etc.

You do not teach children to love learning and reading by embarrassing them in front of their peers. If you aren’t sure what bully behavior looks like read it from All Nurses.com: A short list about bully behaviors. For instance: fault-finding, nit-picking, nagging, isolation, breach of confidence, social exclusions, lack of credit for efforts, yelling, treated in a rude-disrespectful manner, giving little or no feedback about performance, prevention from expressing self, dirty looks, etc.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, with a BA in journalism and an MFA in writing, who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).